Saturday, December 1, 2012

Some holiday cheer for musicians

Things are looking up for musicians - economically - if
you take the PNC Christmas
Price Index® as more than just a whimsical economic analysis.
The bank’s 29th annual price calculation for the gifts in the
holiday classic, "The Twelve Days of Christmas," showed the
overall gift cost rose 3.5 percent over the past year. The 12-gifts price tag this
year is $25,431.18, which is $1,168 more than 2011’s CPI.As for the musicians… the prices for hiring 11 Pipers Piping ($2,562.00) and 12 Drummers Drumming ($2,775.50) each rose 5.5 percent this year – about three percent better than the government’s Consumer Price Index performance. Prices for those musicians in the song - the drummers and pipers - were provided by a Pennsylvania musicians union.

The Pittsburgh-based bank’s Wealth Management Group began the Christmas Price Index tradition in 1984 as a way to engage clients of PNC’s predecessor, Provident
Bank. (Back then, the cost for all 12 gifts was $12,673.56.) According to the
CPI, hiring the musicians in 1984 would have cost $770 for the 11 Pipers Piping
and $834 for the 12 Drummers Drumming.